


every bit of beating heart

by Legendaerie



Series: the proud remainders [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Sex, Divine Pulse (Fire Emblem), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Hair Braiding, Hurt/Comfort, Love is War, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), War is hell, implied one sided Felix/Dimitri, slight canon divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:02:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22946743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: “It has to be you.”——-Sylvain and Felix come to terms with what they left behind.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: the proud remainders [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588771
Comments: 66
Kudos: 366





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> :3

There is no time for one’s self in war.

Every moment, every blink of the eye and breath of the weary chest belongs to the army. The moment they set out from Garreg Mach, each individual person melts away and becomes part of the company, one easily forgotten cell in the massive beast crawling across the continent to slaughter its twin. Sylvain is reduced to a man in armor on a horse, leading a collection of other men on horses, marching in the early spring sun.

It’s good to sweat. To move without thinking in tandem with another body. He relaxes on the back of his horse, letting his body rock with every step and closing his eyes for long stretches of empty road. Not as satisfying as sex, perhaps, but he’s not been interested in that for a while now. Too busy trying to take back the continent to try to seduce anyone, he tells himself, and no other reason.

And now, they march for Gronder Field. 

He’s heard it said that time is a circle, and that some events are fated to endlessly repeat; patterns flashing like a kaleidoscope, infinitely complicated and impossibly symmetrical; brilliant, beautiful, and the exact same shit. If there’s any place for their fallen beast Prince to show himself, it’s here. He doesn’t want to admit that he hopes Dimitri is alive - the moment he does, it’ll be snuffed out like a candle at the end of its wick - so he tries to imagine what the end of the war would look like.

He can’t picture it anymore. He wants to, same as everybody, but he’s still a traitor to his family and country. People like him don’t get a happy ending. Only in the books that Ashe used to read, and they left him for dead in Ailell.

“Hey.”

Sylvain opens his eyes and looks down.

Felix has fallen into step beside his horse, looking up at him. Under furrowed brows, his eyes catch the afternoon sun and flash with flecks of orange like sparks from a bonfire. Sylvain’s breath catches in his chest.

“We’re planning on camping at Tabris Gulch,” Felix says. “Claude reported back and said it should be the most defendable spot.”

“All right. I’ll make sure to lead the company that way.”

Felix nods, but doesn’t immediately leave. His shoulders are heaving - his unit is much farther in the back than Sylvain’s, which is near the front of the company on account of their mounts. He must have had to run to catch up.

“You could have sent a messenger,” Sylvain says.

Felix shakes his head, eyes front. “They wouldn’t have known which one was you from the ground. I know you _and_ your horse.”

It’s the most they’ve spoken in one conversation in a month.

“Do you want on?” Sylvain asks, gesturing to his horse’s back. Felix stares, mouth offset as though he is biting his tongue, then nods.

He slides his boots out of the stirrups and slips back on the horse with a muttered “ease up.” The horse slows his pace; sitting on the beast’s haunches, Sylvain tightens his grip with his thighs and pats the saddle. Felix pulls himself up with a huff, settling in front of Sylvain. 

One of the stallion’s ears swivels backwards, and Sylvain strokes the horses hip to soothe him.

“There we go. Walk on,” he clicks his tongue, and the horse speeds back up, pace smooth enough not to bounce off his riders.

Their leisurely pace in the sun sits in stark contrast to Sylvain’s memory of the last time they were in a position like this; the last time they rode together on his horse. The last time he was this close to the nape of Felix’s neck.

The bite he left is long, long gone.

“How goes it in the back of the line?” Sylvain asks, trying to keep his mind off his memories.

Felix shrugs, sweeping his eyes around the landscape. “It’s fine. We’re making good time. I think we’ll hit camp before nightfall.”

“Appreciate the view up here?”

“Yes,” Felix replies absently. Sylvain imagines a whooshing sound as the joke about his stature flies over his head. “Can’t see much from my unit.”

Sylvain hums. “Anything interesting?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Felix’s silence is bowstring tight, and in a rush that is tinted with far too much hope Sylvain thinks he knows why Felix is here.

“C’mere,” and he pulls off his gloves, one by one. “Your hair’s coming loose.”

Felix starts to turn around as Sylvain pulls the first pin out of his hair. He stills once it’s out, just the corner of his eye visible from where he started to turn. There’s a smudge of dirt on his cheek, a scratch on his jaw from a bramble with a pebbled scab blending into the stubble.

A moment. A beat. A breath.

Felix turns his head forward and exhales, surrendering to Sylvain’s touch. And in this moment, on the road to death or bittersweet triumph, Sylvain allows himself the luxury to fall irrevocably in love.

“Well?” Felix asks when Sylvain doesn’t move.

He shakes his head, a lie springing to his tongue. “Sorry, almost dropped the pin.” Easing out the next one, he presses them between his lips; the third and fourth join their brethren, and Sylvain gently combs out Felix’s complicated mess of a ponytail with his fingers.

Ingrid taught him how to braid. First for the horses, one of the few interests they shared outside of combat training, then he learned the plaits she preferred to wear herself. Human hair is much more delicate than horse hair, and Sylvain likes the feeling of it brushing along his fingers, fibrous like grass and fluid like water.

Felix’s hair is dusty and oily from the day’s march, tangled at the ends. He’s careful to ease out the knots without pulling on the scalp, careful to stay quiet, careful not to let his hands stay still for too long as he tries to memorize the sensation of Felix’s hair as he separates it into three pieces.

He’s in love, here, but only right now; only as he wraps the first section of hair over the center, over and over, one divided into three becoming one again. He’s in love, but he’ll be out of it before Felix’s boots hit the ground again without so much as a look back and he returns to the battalion he left behind. He’s in love, but he’s nobody, just another body on a horse, and a soldier who loves will do a rotten job at staying alive.

Sylvain finishes the braid and tucks it into itself so it forms a bun in the back of his head. He eases a pin or two out of his pocket, left over from braiding his stallion’s mane for war, to hold it all together and slaps Felix gently on the thigh.

“There you go,” he says, forcing lighthearted cheer into his voice. “All done.”

Felix doesn’t thank him, but his eyes meet Sylvain’s once he’s slid off the horse and lets the calvary river around him.

It’s so quiet Sylvain reads it off his lips. “Don’t die.”

He throws his best friend a grave salute, and can’t tear his eyes away until the other riders have obscured Felix from his sight.

* * *

Killing isn’t hard.

The first life he took was hard, he supposes, because he still remembers the man’s face and he threw up an hour later. But the act itself is easy. It takes so little effort to snuff out a life with the Lance of Ruin. All he has to do is let it spin around him and his horse, the weight of it a feather in his hand so long as the blood of his enemies is quenching it’s thirst. 

Killing is monotonous, and he wishes it felt like _anything_ any more.

They’re halfway across Gronder Field by midday, the green grass soggy with gore and his horse’s hooves sinking into the earth. The stallion is too well trained to flinch at the suction of the saturated turf with every step, and his rider’s eyes fall to a swordsman climbing the hill to take the ballista.

Bernadetta is up there, screaming for Felix not to get closer. She’d already cut down Ingrid, who barely survived the fall from her mare. Felix has his orders. They all do. Would Sylvain be able to kill her if _he_ was asked?

The Lance in his hand isn’t satisfied yet. It never is. Sylvain presses the twitching tip of it into a fresh corpse, twisting it idly.

“Sylvain.”

The professor is so quiet. He never saw her coming. Sylvain yanks his weapon up, the speed of his movement splattering blood on his cheek and neck.

“Yes?”

She points to a smudge in the distance, opposite of the hill when Bernadetta’s screams are reaching their peak. Sylvain turns his back on the ballista and sends a bitter, faithless prayer to the sky for her soul.

He’s too preoccupied with her fate to recognize what the professor is pointing at initially. A shape with pale yellow hair, a massive grey body. They mean little to him.

It’s the man beside him with the dark complexion of Duscur that identifies the target, and Sylvain thinks he might throw up again.

“No,” he chokes. “He’s _dead.”_

He really did abandon Dimitri. He tore Ingrid and Felix away from their prince, dragged them down with him because he was so tired of Faerghus and Crests and the way Felix looked when he talked about Dimitri.

He’s a traitor to the bone.

“I need you, Sylvain,” says the professor. “You fight with a lance, and Ingrid had to retreat. You can reach him before he tears into the mages in our back line.”

He looks down at her, hunting for the fabled Ashen Demon in her eyes. Instead they are as verdant and tender as a morning glory bud, unfurling in front of him. She understands what she is asking.

“You’re the only one you can survive him long enough to stop him.”

Sylvain looks back to the hill, and the silhouette of Felix at the ballista. Their eyes can’t meet at this distance, but the flash of his sword as he sheathes it feels like a salute. A recognition.

He grips the Lance of Ruin in his hand and bites his tongue with a nod. The professor takes his hand and pulls him down, whispering three words into his ear that nearly crush him under the weight of them.

“This is why it has to be you,” she says, and he knows she’s right because being around her feels like being home and being boiled alive at once. He knows she’s right because she’s destiny incarnate and inexorable. He knows she’s right because she’s the professor, and he is compelled to follow her.

So Sylvain flicks his Lance in answer to the shape on the hill then urges his horse into a gallop, crossing the space between himself and Dimitri and leaping off the horse at the last moment.

Dedue does not raise his axe, but Dimitri has already had his scythe at the ready, hacking at the spells Marianne is flinging at him with no real heart and tears streaming down her face.

“Please, Dimitri! You know me!” she gasps.

His lips are moving like he’s chanting something but his face is blank. His blond hair looks matted, hanging in shreds around his face, and when he finally notices Sylvain and turns there’s a patch over one eye.

“Get out of my way,” he states, voice flat and empty. “I have come for Edelgard‘s head.”

“Go home, Dimitri.” Sylvain feels the Lance Of Ruin burning in his hand. “We’re on the same side.”

“You don’t understand. They need me to do it,” he continues, taking a step forward. “So they can rest easy. They’re so tired, and so am I, but I have to kill. For them.”

When he moves, it’s faster than Sylvain thought possible. He blocks the first blow instead of dodging it, acting on instinct from years of being taller and broader than most of his opponents, and the power behind the swing nearly breaks the Lance. Dimitri’s single eye may be unfocused and his mind may be elsewhere, but the strength in his strikes is unmatched.

Sylvain leaps back as soon as he can, darting around to get between Dimitri and Marianne.

“Leave Marianne alone. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. You know that,” he spits at his friend. “You know _her_!”

“She was in my way,” he says. “As are you. We are the living,” his words slurred with the edge of madness, “and we must suffer for the dead.”

Dimitri charges again, driving Sylvain backwards. It takes everything he has to block the blows his once-friend rains down on him, arms numb to the shoulders from the impacts. He’s a beast. Felix was right about him. Felix was always right.

Felix—

Sylvain changes his stance, the professors’ request fading in his mind as the Lance spins in his hands, the air singing around it.

“Why is it _you_ ,” Sylvain grinds out as he lunges forward, driving the point of his Lance towards Dimitri’s heart. “You were supposed to lead us! Why do _you_ get to throw everything away?”

Were they fighting with any other weapons, they would have shattered by now. But Relics are made of magic and spite, and they glow like the setting sun as the two men slash and stab at each other.

“It has to be me,” Dimitri gasps when their lances are locked and their faces are inches away. “They told me so. All the countless dead need me; as the last King of Faergus, I must satisfy their regrets and slaughter the Empire. Can you understand?”

Sylvain pulls on the Lance, burning with the need to drive it through his body. “The _living_ needed you! Your _friends_ needed you!”

Dimitri yanks at their conjoined weapons. The Lance of Ruin is torn out of Sylvain’s grasp and flung across the battlefield, the crest stone catching the light and flashing red like fire.

“My friends?” Dimitri asks, a flicker of confusion passing over his face. 

Time slows down. Sylvain tries to ready a spell but it crawls down his arms like molasses, sluggish with fear. 

Disgusting. After everything he’s done, he still doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t have the right to want to live after everything he’s done, and yet— 

and yet— 

“What friends?” Dimitri asks, miserable and empty, and swings his scythe. It tears through Sylvain’s body from right shoulder to left hip, ripping him in half and spraying the grass around them in blood.

Miles away, Sylvain hears Felix scream

and

time

stops.

.

.

.

.

.

  
  
  


He’s dying.

It’s the most terrifying feeling in the world, like the last step over the edge of a cliff before gravity yanks you down. Laying on the battlefield in a pool of his own blood and organs, Sylvain stares at Dimitri’s legs as he approaches his fallen friend. There’s no air left in his lungs to breathe, no blood in his body for his heart to beat. He’s helpless, suspended in time as the last few seconds of his existence dwindle away, fading into the air like smoke from a snuffed candle.

The man in front of him places one heavy armored boot on his back, then the other, crushing him into the soggy earth. Unphased, unfeeling, Dimitri continues his path forward.

Sylvain failed.

He’s dying. He’ll never see that bright promised future that Claude swears is just over the horizon. Never live in a world where marriages are made for love and nothing else. Never braid long, dirty midnight-dark hair again.

Pale legs in golden sandals step into his line of sight, and someone with long green hair kneels in front of him.

“Come on,” says destiny, “let’s try that again.”

and

time

rewinds

.

.

.

.

“It has to be me,” Dimitri gasps. “They told me so. All the countless dead need me; as the last King of Faergus, I must satisfy their regrets and slaughter the Empire. Can you understand?”

Their weapons are locked, the protruding teeth on both blades biting down into each other like living things desperate for the kill. Sylvain sucks in a breath, his heart pounding in his chest.

The professor’s request comes back to him, and even as he tastes blood in his mouth he knows what he needs to do.

“The living need me,” Sylvain says, throwing the Lance of Ruin to the side and pouring magic into his palms.

When Dimitri swings, he is ready.

Dropping to the dirt, Sylvain slams his hands into the earth and channels his strongest spell. The ground trembles beneath him, and Dimitri raises his scythe again.

The battlefield rips itself in half under Dimitri, plumes of fire and stone shooting up from below to knock him back and entirely off his feet. Sylvain staggers upright, stumbles the needed distance to recover the Lance, and as Dimitri begins to stand Sylvain cracks him in the head with the end of the shaft.

Miles away, Sylvain hears Felix scream.

Dimitri’s eyes roll back in his head and he crumples to the ground. Dedue starts to approach him and then stops, confronted with the unwavering bone blade of the Lance of Ruin.

“Don’t,” Sylvain warns him. “I don’t want to kill you, either.”

Sylvain’s breath is still ragged and tastes of blood. He knows if Dedue charged, it would be the end of him. His Lance is at a disadvantage to that silver battle axe, and he’s exhausted after using his Ragnarok spell.

Despite the years between them, understanding crosses Dedue’s face.

“I will come for him later,” he rasps, then turns back the way they had both came.

Sylvain slams the end of the Lance into the ground and leans into it, gasping. There’s a phantom pain and a terrifying memory fading more with every second, but Marianne is still there watching him with frightened eyes.

“Don’t let anyone but Claude and the professor touch him,” he instructs her, coughing into his fist as he forces himself to stand.

“Are you hurt?”

Sylvain pats his body down. “No. No, I’m all right,” and he clears his throat. “I have to get back to the front lines. I’ll try to stay in Lysithea’s Warp range if you need me.”

She nods, then turns back to her spell casting an expression of fierce determination. It’s not as lovely as her smile, but he’s glad to see it anyway.

Sylvain coughs, then whistles for his horse. The stallion comes cantering back, sides shuddering from nerves. He strokes a hand down its neck, rasps a soothing phrase or two to the nervous animal, and looks around for the Professor to await his next orders.

Something has shifted the tide of battle, and there’s hardly an Empire soldier still standing. The beat of wings makes Sylvain look up, and Claude’s pearl-white wyvern lands over Dimitri’s body. 

Sylvain’s horse neighs, taking a couple steps back and rearing slightly. He moves back with it, clearing his throat and trying again to calm it with his words. “Easy, easy,” he manages, holding its face in both hands and rubbing its jaw. “It’s all right. They’re on our side.”

The wyvern lowers its head, nuzzling the fur cape over Dimitri’s shoulders and opens its mouth.

“Don’t touch him!”

Felix appears, spattered with blood and mud halfway up his legs, gasping for breath and shaking as he storms up. Sylvain catches him without thought, feeling for injures - nothing he can find immediately, and relief sags his shoulders.

“Whoa, whoa,” he starts. “It’s okay.”

The rest of his words are shattered in his mouth when Felix punches him with his full strength. He lets go of the swordsman immediately, hand flying to his jaw and gaping.

Felix isn’t trembling with fear or exhaustion. He’s vibrating with _rage_ , and his eyes blaze with pure hatred.

“Don’t. You _dare_. _Touch_ me. _Ever_ again.”

For the second time, Sylvain feels his heart stop. But the world doesn’t give him a reprieve this time; Felix steps closer and keeps going, his words tearing through Sylvain with all the sharpness and force of Dimitri’s scythe.

“I almost believed you for a moment, you know? Almost trusted you. _We’ll save him, Felix,”_ he throws Sylvain’s whispered words from months ago in his face, sneering. “Just more empty promises.”

With that, Felix spins around and turns his back on him.

Sylvain spits out the molar Felix had dislodged into his hand and stares at it, searching for an answer in it. His reflection stares at him, pale and streaked with spit and blood.

Once again, his wasn’t the name Felix had said.

Felix has drawn his sword and is pointing it at Claude and his wyvern, the latter of whom is holding Dimitri’s limp form in its massive mouth.

“You don’t get to touch _him_ _either_ ,” Felix grinds out. Claude, to his credit, keeps his calm and leans to the side to let the Professor slide off the wyvern’s back.

She crosses the blood soaked ground and pushes Felix’s blade to the side with two fingertips.

“He’s alive, Felix,” she says. “Sylvain didn’t kill him.”

Sylvain turns before he can see the look on Felix’s face. He mounts his stallion instead, tooth still in one fist, clicking his tongue and tapping the stallion’s side with his heel.

“I’ll get Marianne,” he says loudly, dismissing himself before anyone else can, trotting his horse across the field.

She’ll heal his tooth. The rest of it is his own fault, and it’ll go away eventually. It always does.

“Sylvain,” says a low voice behind him, cracking with grief. 

He doesn’t look down.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me!
> 
> Also, forgot to mention - this fic’s title is from “You’re Somebody Else” by Flora Cash. Yes, the entire series is titled from songs off my Sylvix playlist, which you can find [here.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3VoKm6xveF5XMbpjYDSaMK?si=CueMnQIiTRu_L5ilXJ9Jlw)

Sylvain loses track of his days.

It’s been at least a week since the battle at Gronder Field. Marianne put his mouth back together and Dimitri is… conscious, to an extent. He’s being kept in a dormitory for now, usually sedated as he’s taken to destroying the room he’s in otherwise. Claude and the Professor have visited him a couple of times, but he’s not showing signs of improving. He doesn’t recognize either of them.

Sylvain had tried to talk to him, once. It took all of his nerve and he expected a hail of blows and cruel words, but he had steeled himself for the wrong reaction. Dimitri had just stared through him the entire time. Anger, rage or pain he could have handled - he’d grown up with Miklan, after all, in a castle so cold ice lodged itself into the hearts of its occupants - but this emptiness opened up a chasm of nausea in his stomach.

Even now, the feeling remains.

“Hey, Raphael,” he waves down the merchant’s son. “Do you want the rest of my bread?”

It’s handed down the lunch table and consumed with glee. Raphael gives him a grin and a thumbs up, which he returns before attempting another bite of soup. It doesn’t help. He still gags on it before he can swallow because Felix enters the dining hall, and his appetite vanishes mid-mouthful.

“All right,” Ingrid slams her fist on the table, startling Dorothea and Linhardt. “That’s it. It’s been two weeks, Sylvain. You need to talk to him.”

“Who?” he asks, partly to be difficult and partly because he _does_ need the distinction.

“Felix. Marianne told me what happened. You need to let him talk to you.”

Sylvain makes a show of rolling his eyes before he stands up. “Okay. _Hey, Felix!”_ he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts as loud as he can across the dining hall. 

Felix drops his empty clay plate, which shatters on the floor. Every conversation in the room comes to a dead halt.

“ _Do you want to come talk to me?”_ Sylvain bellows, watching Felix’s shoulders tense and raise like a frightened cat as he stares back at Sylvain.

There’s a beat of silence; then Felix spins on his heel and rushes out of the dining hall empty handed. A clatter of dishes and Annette rises to follow him, her own plate of food in hand.

“See?” Sylvain asks and sits back down, satisfied in having broken his own heart before anyone could do it to him. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“You’re a monster,” Ingrid says, her voice trembling.

He shrugs. “You wanna slap me for it, too?” He taps the opposite cheek that Felix hit. “Could complete the set.”

Ingrid takes in a deep, shaking breath and closes her eyes. For a moment, he thinks she’s going to do it, but then a tear leaks out from under her eyelids and that hurts him much, much worse.

His stoicism buckles, and he starts to reach for her. Dorothea stops him with a knowing expression and a little shake to her head, draping an arm over Ingrid’s shoulders.

“There now, Ingrid. You’re going to ruin all that eyeliner I helped you put on this morning. C’mon, let’s go patch it up.”

Sylvain sits there for a minute after they leave, staring after them. When he comes back to himself and looks over, Lindhardt is watching him with undisguised interest, his chin resting in one hand.

“It hurts a lot, doesn't it?” The mage asks.

Sylvain stiffens.

Lindhardt taps his cheek. “You weren’t chewing on that side.”

He lets out a breath and relaxes, shaking his head. “Yeah. Want my leftovers?”

“Sure.”

Sylvain shoves his bowl over and leaves, taking the long route to the stables. Might as well muck some stalls and hang around shit for a few hours, especially if he’s going to feel like the stuff.

Act like it, too.

He passes the rest of the day like that, throwing himself into menial tasks that no one can possibly fault him for doing. Once he’s finished with the horses he seeks out Hilda, and they hollowly flirt with each other until she calls him out for not being into it and just lets him clean her weapons and armor until they shine. Then he helps the fishkeeper harvest some of the silt from the pond to keep it from building up too much and to fertilize the garden, stretching to flex his muscles each time a woman drew a little too close to where he was working half naked in the water.

By the time he’s finished, he smells like every animal in Fódlan combined. 

Ignatz is the only other person in the bathhouse when he enters. The archer looks up from toweling himself dry, blinking owlishly without his glasses.

“Who’s there?” he asks.

“Seteth,” Sylvain replies dryly, stripping off his clothes without hesitation.

“Oh, Sylvain. How… how are you?”

He’d be better if people stopped asking him about it. “I’m so _sore_ and _tired_ ,” he says, affecting a needy and flirtatious tone. “I’d _love_ a good rub down if you wanted to make me feel better.”

Ignatz laughs nervously. “Sorry, but I don’t want to get a sword across my throat.”

Sylvain shakes out the sweat and dried mud in his hair, trying to get the worst of the grit out before he gets wet. “I wouldn’t cut you,” he snorts. “And all of my exes from school are long gone. Who are you scared of?”

“Felix,” Ignatz says, turning to stare at him curiously, towel wrapped around his waist. Like it’s so obvious he didn’t need to say it.

“Felix?” he echoes, mouth dry. Then he laughs, throwing back his head and getting into it. “Please. He’d thank you for getting me out of his hair.”

The memory of Felix on the horse in front of him, quietly trusting as Sylvain eased the tangles out of his ponytail, is bundled up and tossed aside with his soiled clothes.

Ignatz doesn’t laugh. “Also, I think I might be dating Leonie, and she'll stab me too if I, uh.” He gestures with his free hand at Sylvain’s body. “You know.”

“So _chaste_ ,” Sylvain tuts, wetting a rag and rubbing it down with a bar of soap. “Want some tips on how to be a good mount?”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

The archer excuses himself, barely half dressed. Sylvain lets the lascivious smile slide off his face and scrubs himself clean in silence.

There’s a mirror and a basin for cleaning the face; once his body is clean and drying in the steam-warmed air drifting in from the sauna next door, Sylvain shaves with silent precision and studies his reflection. Turning his head this way and that, looking for missed hair or nicks. Eventually, his eyes track up to meet the gaze of his reflection and the deep shadows under them.

Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on Dimitri. Sylvain barely recognizes _himself_ right now.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes, and tries to pull up a flirtatious smile from deep within his chest. It appears in a flash, brilliant as a spark but fades just as fast.

“Fuck,” he says, hiding his face in his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Sylvain spent years burying his feelings — shoving his face into pillows, gasping his way through those awful rib-shaking sobs and trying so damn hard not to let Miklan see how much it _hurt_ because then he would _win —_ and his practice pays off. He pulls himself together in seconds, yanks his composure tight as a woman’s corset and bites his tongue.

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t. He never had enough of a heart to really love anyone in the first place. He’s fine.

He dresses and retreats to the dormitories, his footsteps soft up the stairs. And down the candlelit stairwell drifts a sound; a gentle knock on a wooden door.

Sylvain thinks little of it until a voice follows.

“Dimitri?”

It’s Felix.

Sylvain’s heart drops, landing somewhere deep in the catacombs beneath Garreg Mach, cold and empty as the crypts. In selfish silence, he retreats, not ready by miles to hear their hushed conversation. 

He sleeps in the stables that night, surrounded by the scent of fresh hay, and dreams of that gentle voice saying Sylvain’s name instead.

* * *

They don’t talk. 

Felix trains and visits Dimitri and juggles brightly painted wooden balls for coin for all Sylvain knows. He spends every possible second on the opposite end of the monastery or in town, frittering what coin he has to his name on wine (that he drinks) and women (that he takes upstairs and is too drunk to do anything with) until the Professor catches him stumbling up to the gate in the watery light of dawn. Her piercing gaze sobers him up immediately, and any excuse he had dies on his tongue.

“Do better, Sylvain,” she says. 

He nods and goes back to his bed and tries, just a little, not to be an embarrassment to everyone around him.

And then Fort Merceus is destroyed by pillars of iron and fire from the heavens, and Sylvain forgets to do anything at all.

* * *

  
  


Sylvain knows better than to assume that taking the imperial capital will be their last battle. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Claude or the Professor - he does, for reasons he can’t name and doesn’t always like - but because he can’t find it in himself to believe that this conflict will _end_ anything. _Change_ anything. And even if it does, somehow, and he can go back home it’s right back to defending the border at Sreng.

He’s tired. He’s empty. And yet he hefts the Lance of Ruin and moves when told because there’s nothing else he can do. Faergus fell. The only thing he has left are the people around him.

He catches Felix’s eye when they’re taking their positions around the Capital. The very air around them is charged with the desperate feelings of an army wanting to make this the final battle, adrenaline and grief.

Without letting himself think, Sylvain leaps off his horse and strides through the ranks of soldiers until he is close enough to speak.

“Felix.”

As if he needed to get the swordman’s attention. Those sunset-bright eyes have been fixed on his every step, narrowed with trepidation.

Sylvain has a million things to say right now, and a million more he wants to hear. For now, he has to settle for what is important.

“I am still on your side,” he says, low and quiet and more earnest than he’s ever been. They’re not okay and they don’t have time to be okay, and maybe they won’t ever again, but Felix has to know. It’s not only their lives on the line. Those who follow them trust them, and they need to trust each other.

Felix takes in a short breath and nods - a sharp, barely perceptible movement. 

Sylvain tears himself away to get back on his horse, the same steady black stallion who brought him to Garreg Mach all those months ago, and knows that if he dies today he’ll die still in love with Felix.

His battalion is waiting for him, a sea of nervous shifting horses and grey faced soldiers. Far ahead, he can hear the faint voice of Claude giving a speech to the front lines. None of the words make it over to Sylvain’s battalion, so he turns to the ranks of loyal men and beasts under his command and tries to think of something to say.

What comes to mind is something he never would have said if he had stayed and fought with Faergus.

“I will not ask you to _pray_ for victory,” he says, his stallion pacing in front of the first rank of his cavaliers, “because after what we have seen I cannot blame you if you wonder if the Goddess is still listening to us.”

Sylvain knows that what he says borders on blaspheme, but he also knows the men and women in his midst; he has seen what they have seen, done what they have done, and in the bowels and trenches of war it may not be hard to believe in a divine power but it is hard to believe in a divine that _cares_. 

“What we have seen would shake the faith of even the most devoted, but that does not mean that we lack _conviction_.”

Sylvain draws the Lance of Ruin and calls on its power, numb to the poisonous ache it stirs in his blood like a wasp sting and letting the crimson glow of the Crest stone emphasize his words.

“We fight today not only for the Church, or for the Alliance, but for our own lives and the lives of those important to us.” His breath catches at the hypocrisy, but he presses on. “If you cannot believe in the Creator, then believe in us; your allies and your friends in arms. And even if we fall, to a man, then believe in yourselves and fight on! However it may end, this ends today!”

There’s a roar of voices from the front line of the army. It swells and floods through the ranks until Sylvain’s voice is melting into the cries of his battalion, the Lance of Ruin held aloft and flashing a bright, ravenous red.

“Charge!”

His stallion whinnies and pivots on his command, and the Heir of Gautier leads his troops into the fray.

The passage of time in a battle is strange. Some moments crawl by, slow and miserable and centuries long and others pass in a lightning strike. Some are both. Impaling a wyvern in the mouth with his Lance and driving the blade into the beast’s brain takes three seconds, but the moments before, when the beast’s mouth is open wide and those wicked teeth are aimed to crush his skull, take years to pass. Ripping the blade out and watching the reptile’s death throes unseat its rider is twice and long, but meeting the rider’s eyes is tainted with terrifying immediacy.

There’s no time to hesitate. By the time it occurs to him to send the young soldier (too young, far too young) away with a murmured threat to never come back, the Lance is already in motion. Human blood mixes with wyvern on the porous bone-white blade, staining it amber. The weapon shudders in his hand with satisfaction, and another body falls to the blood-streaked stone.

Sylvain mutters half a prayer, half an apology under his breath and moves on.

He does his part in clearing a path to an onager, which Hilda claims as her own. Her excuses of a selfish desire to stop fighting and just sit still for a while are belied by the dedication with which she handles the war machine, slinging rocks at their enemies from halfway across the battlefield. He’s on his way back across the bridge over the canal when there’s a sharp whistling noise.

Sylvain doesn’t have time to blink before a crossbow bolt as thick as a spear thwacks into his shoulder. It tears through his armor like the metal is no more than wet paper, and the impact of the shot sends both horse and rider into the muddy, bloodstreaked water below.

A ballista.

He thinks of Bernadetta in the split second before the water swallows him whole.

* * *

As he drifts to the bottom of the soiled, man-made river; a memory. 

Miklan hadn’t always been— _rough_ with Sylvain. There had been a time where they got along, where Miklan would hold Sylvain’s hand without asking and tell him everything he knew about the world. True, it was often obnoxious and self important but they had been children. Brothers.

Sylvain wouldn’t have followed him outside and up the hill at night in the rain if he hadn’t once trusted his big brother.

It had been raining for five days, and the air inside Castle Gautier had been stormy for several months longer than that. Their parents, presumably having given up on even a Minor Crest appearing in Miklan, had begun to treat him as such. Sylvain was suddenly gifted the much nicer bedroom and had insisted on moving his own things in himself as Miklan had started breaking Sylvain’s favorite toys if allowed to touch them. The carved horse Glenn had gotten him was carefully stashed under the bed where no one would ever find it. Miklan had come into the room just as Sylvain was crawling out from under it; he agreed so quickly to go on ‘an adventure’ to avoid any searches.

_We can’t tell anyone where we’re going,_ Miklan had said. And so Sylvain had believed him.

It had been raining for five days, and the ground was soggy under their boots. Sylvain was quickly regretting coming outside at all, the evening chill settling into his damp clothes as they walked deeper into the forest. He called questions up at Miklan once or twice, but no answer.

There was a well at the top of the hill that no one had used for years. Dried up, maybe, but it had been raining for five days. When Sylvain leaned over the edge he could see the water shimmering and shivering with every drop.

Miklan pushed him in. Headfirst. The gash at his hairline from where his head smacked the stone would scar over in time, and Sylvain would look at it in the mirror every day to remind himself to never trust anyone that deeply again.

And yet, when he woke up to Felix and Ingrid snuggled in bed asleep next to him and the taste of rancid rainwater in his mouth, he’d make a pinky promise with no thought to it at all.

_Don’t die,_ a teary Felix had said, clasping their hands together. _Not without me. Don’t leave me behind._

_Never,_ Sylvain swore. And he did his best to keep it.

* * *

Sylvain gasps for breath as he’s lifted above the surface of the water. The sounds of battle are even louder now after the brief underwater reprive, and the water on his lips is fouled with human blood and waste. He gags on it as someone drags him through the water, the world going dark as they go.

“Felix?” he gasps, hoping. Praying. One last time before he dies, for real.

He’s pulled up onto the sloping stone side of the canal, laid on his side. The ballista bolt is sticking out of his back, making it difficult to breathe or think through the pain. A hand rubs across his face, wiping the wet hair out of his eyes. He blinks them open.

“Don’t talk,” says Felix, holding his gaze. They’re under the bridge, half out of the water. No need for the instructions. Sylvain’s words dry up when their eyes meet and don’t return even when Felix stands and draws his sword.

“Hold still,” he grits, then brings his sword down in a two handed stroke. There’s a sharp ping of metal on metal, then Sylvain is eased onto his back. With the tip of his sword, Felix flicks the head of the ballista bolt into the water. 

He wonders if it joins the Lance of Ruin in there, surrounded by gore and water and shit. Where such tools of war belong.

“Is my horse okay?” Sylvain croaks, wincing as his chest hurts with every breath. 

“I said don’t _talk_ ,” Felix repeats, straddling Sylvain and pressing his hands gently around the ballista bolt. Whatever he finds by doing that, he doesn’t like. His face goes ashen and grim.

Sylvain tries to peer around Felix and is pushed back down against the stone.

“Don’t _move_ ,” Felix snaps, his voice breaking. 

Sylvain whistles. There’s a splash behind them, and his raven black stallion limps into view. Satisfied, he relaxes against the slope, closing his eyes in a long blink before looking at Felix again.

“You look terrible,” Sylvain says, expecting a slap for his sass. It hurts, of course, but Sylvain is well-used to pain and waits childishly pleased for a reaction to his joke.

Instead of answering, Felix keeps staring at Sylvain’s chest, his lips scarcely moving as he mutters, eyes wide.

“I can’t remember what— what I’m supposed to do. I can’t remember if I need to take it out or not, I don’t— I should have studied more, I should have remembered—“

“You know me, I’m a big fan of the pull out,” Sylvain starts before he coughs. And if getting shot didn’t hurt enough, coughing certainly does - it’s wet and broken and wrong, shaking his entire body.

“Stop,” Felix snarls, pressing Sylvain’s shoulders into the stone. He’s shaking, his entire body trembling like a bowstring after the arrow has been fired, his teeth bared in a snarl. He looks feral. He looks madder than Sylvain has seen him since—

He looks like _Dimitri_.

The last spark of his will to keep fighting is ground beneath the heel of that expression. After everything he’s done, he didn’t manage to help any of his friends. Ingrid in tears, Dimitri out of his mind, and Felix...

“You should pull it out,” Sylvain says, tone flat. Breathing shallow because otherwise the coughs set in, short phrases like the motion of a bone saw. “Kill me here. I’ll bleed out, but it’s better than keeping— doing what we’re doing.”

The animal above him recoils. “What?” Felix asks, soft. Horrified.

“I know I said I wanted— to build a better world. I lied. I just wanted one with you. Faergus was never that. Not how things were with Crests.” He swallows, and it’s thick with blood but he’s not dying yet. He knows what that feels like. He still has time. “Kill me here, Felix. Quick and clean. Before living without you does me in.”

Felix stares at him.

Sylvain has no idea what he looks like. Armor streaked with blood and mud, hair plastered to his skull - that he assumes. But Felix doesn’t—

It’s like he doesn’t _recognize_ Sylvain, here, under the bridge in the middle of the last battle of the war, between his thighs. Like at the end, they’re nothing to each other but soldiers. Numbers on a battlefield.

He doesn’t understand how anything can still hurt after everything he’s been through, but Sylvain grits his teeth.

“Take care, Felix,” he says, and wraps a shaking hand around the ballista bolt.

Something between them - something that was there for years, before the war and the academy and the Tragedy of Duscur - snaps.

Sylvain’s hands are slammed into the stone on either side of his head. Felix leans over him, his eyes burning brighter than Sylvain’s strongest spell, and he - _finally_ \- looks exactly like himself.

“Why did you take me with you when you left Faergus?” he asks, his voice steel against Sylvain’s throat and twice as terrifying as a sword. “Why were you willing to change the entire world just to keep me in it?”

Sylvain holds his furious gaze, too tired of hiding anything anymore. “You know why,” he whispers, knowing he’s been terrible at hiding it. Didn’t even try while they were students together, far from the prying eyes of their patients.

“No,” Felix growls. “I _don’t_.”

It’s so simple. He doesn’t know why it’s taken him so long to say it. “I love you.”

Nothing changes in Felix’s face. He _did_ know. All he does is lean in closer until his unkempt, dripping bangs are brushing Sylvain’s forehead

“Then _live_ , you _bastard_ ,” he snarls in the inches between them, “and _show_ me. Just like you promised all those years ago.”

Oh.

He’d forgotten. In the heat of it all, he’d forgotten. The promise he made to Felix that morning after he’d been fished, half drowned and stone cold, from the well.

_Don’t leave me behind._

Sylvain doesn’t know what Felix sees when he stares down at him, but he must see something he likes. The brittle mask breaks in half and Felix kisses him, damp and desperate, the hands gripping Sylvain’s wrists sliding up to lace their fingers together. His lips taste like ditchwater and tears but Sylvain has never wanted anything more in his life.

When Felix pulls away, it feels like getting struck with the arrow all over again. He tries to chase that sharp, impossible mouth, but the ballista bolt gets in his way. 

“I can’t heal you alone,” Felix pants, wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand and sitting up. “I can get help. Here,” and he fumbles for something in his pocket - the delicate vial of a vulnary. “Open your mouth.”

It helps that Felix cups his head when he pours a few precious drops of the milky, medicinal liquor on Sylvain’s tongue. He can feel it working almost immediately, steadying his trembling heart and restoring some of the blood he lost. 

Felix stands. Immediately, Sylvain misses his warmth. Strange; of the four of them, Sylvain’s body always ran the hottest.

“Don’t go,” Sylvain croaks. “Not now.”

“It’s not over yet, Sylvain.” Felix adjusts the swords attached to his belt, scanning the area. The profile of his face, the features blurring in the lowered light under the bright, would take Sylvain’s breath away if his injury hadn’t already. “I will come back when it is.”

“Do you promise?”

Felix looks down.

“I already did,” he says, and then steps back out into the light. He’s gone in seconds, scaling the edge of the canal with cat-like agility. Throwing himself back into the fray.

He promised. Of the two of them, Felix is a little better at keeping his word.

At Sylvain’s feet, his horse noses his uninjured arm, then gently lays down beside him. Sylvain runs the back of his armored hand along the beasts side, finding comfort in the repetitive strokes.

The people of Faergus seldom name their horses. They have numbers and family names, but like the nobles themselves they lack individual identities. Sylvain has known this horse for four years, and he’s never given him a name. If he lives through this, he’ll ask Marianne’s help to give him a good one.

Sylvain closes his eyes and prays, and prays, and prays.

  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m currently in self-quarantine for the Coronavirus, and I know I need something like this today. I hope it does something for you all, too.
> 
> Take care.

The first person Sylvain sees in the infirmary is the Professor.

The room - what had been an inn of sorts, close to the Enbarr palace - is crowded, but quiet. Most of the other patients are sleeping off their pain; recovering from the toll healing magic takes on the body. Lindhardt is draped asleep over a chair a few feet away, too tired to read. He’d left the light on and a pile of books within Sylvain’s reach. Seeing right through him, again.

Still, Sylvain is enjoying the book on theoretical applications of Faith magic. Unlike Reason, which flows from the mind and the understanding of nature, Faith comes from the heart and positive emotion, which means that learning Faith can be much harder than Reason. Especially with so many potential different sources of inspiration beyond believing in a single religion, like your love for your fellow man or an assurance that spring will always follow winter, it can be hard to teach.

“Sylvain.”

He fumbles closing the book, almost dropping it. Not his fault. The ballista decided to hit him in his shoulder.

“Yes?” 

Her hair is flat, and her eyes are shadowed. The few steps she takes to his bedside are as thought taken through knee deep mud.

The Lance of Ruin is laid across his bedside. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But we still need you. The ones who sent the javelin of light need to be stopped. We leave for Garreg Mach as soon as you’re able.”

Sylvain looks up at her and allows himself the audacity of anger for a brief second. She had promised. He himself had promised the men beneath him.

He lets the anger out in a sigh and sets the Lance aside. She’d cleaned it for him, and it shines like a blood moon in the low light of the infirmary at night.

“Who did we lose?” he asks quietly.

“No one.”

Her expression doesn’t match her words. Sylvain leans forward, ignoring the pull of the pain in his shoulder, and studies her face. Lit on one side with red and the other with gold, the Professor does not flinch.

She isn’t lying. But—

A phantom pain crosses his body, deep and diagonal, and he thinks of Dimitri. Of dreams and memories fading faster than they should have. Of death, maybe, walked back from the edge.

He thinks of the book on his lap and all the sources of faith in this world; how important it is to have Faith in a concept, for a person could only buckle under the weight of that idealism. And maybe, for a moment, he might understand.

“Hey. Talk to someone about this, okay? Not me,” he says with a brief, feeble smirk, “because I’m a shit person and I’m shit at whatever you’re going through but… no one deserves to go through that pain alone, okay?”

The Professor’s eyes widen, lighting up from within like stars. Before he can react, she’s darted forward in a hug, wrapping her arms around him.

He didn’t realize, all this time, how tiny those shoulders were.

“Thank you, Sylvain,” she whispers. “I’m sorry for what we’ve put you through.”

“Yeah, I know. Just so long as it stops after this. So long as we’re the last generation that has to put up with this.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“I know.” Sylvain holds her a little tighter. “But I can tell how much you wish you could. That’ll have to be enough.”

He lets her go, and when she pulls away she looks herself again, the faintest curve of a smile on her mouth.

“You know,” the Professor says, “you’re not a shit person. You’re not a good person either. You’re just a _person._ And it’s okay to be one, flaws and all.”

She turns around and retreats, stepping outside and then waiting with a little tilt of her head. Looking at something in the hallway, just on the other side of the door.

“I’m glad it’s you,” she says, then walks away on silent feet. Sylvain’s heart knows who it is before they enter the room, tripping over itself and yanking him forward with longing.

And at last, he can breathe again.

“You’re awake,” Felix says from the doorway, voice hoarse. He looks as tired as Sylvain.

“If you don’t come over here right now I’m going to set my own bed on fire,” Sylvain croaks, trying and failing to hold it together.

Felix doesn’t sprint over to his bed, but he does walk a little faster than usual; hesitance still in his body language like a shy cat, his armor and weapons clinking and clanking among themselves like gossiping townswomen as he approaches.

When Sylvain pulls him down into a one-armed hug, Felix huffs but lets himself be manhandled - lets Sylvain do whatever he wants, like he always has, and pretends it’s not what he wanted to do in the first place. Neither of them were ever any good about admitting what they wanted. They might have time to learn how to do it now.

“You’re going to get hurt. I’m too pointy.”

“No I won’t,” Sylvain says, wincing.

“I’m not going to have sex with you in the infirmary,” Felix warns.

Sylvain hums in response, pressing a kiss to that filthy cheek. “That’s fine.”

“I’m _not._ Why are you happy?”

“Means we’re going to have sex _later,_ ” Sylvain whispers, his lips brushing the shell of Felix’s ear, and he finally gets his expected slap in the form of an elbow thumping into his good side.

“I can’t believe I fell for you,” Felix mutters, pressing their foreheads together. There’s still tension radiating from his body - adrenaline from the fight, maybe, or just that emotional prickliness he gets any time he gets too close to being honest - but he’s trying. For Sylvain.

Goddess, but he’d do anything for this man.

“We leave at noon,” Felix whispers against his mouth. “I’ll make sure your horse is ready.”

“Thank you, Felix. Not just for that.” Sylvain murmurs. “For coming back.”

When Felix pulls away, he can see the burn of unasked questions in those eyes. There’s a new tension between them, this one bright with promise.

“I will if you will,” he says with a nod, then leaves.

* * *

They don’t have much time. Again. Sylvain can’t remember what it felt like to have idle hours to wile away, to let his mind drift like smoke from a candle. Even the long ride back to Garreg Mach seems gone in moments, lost in a haze of pain as each step on his stallion jolts his shoulder. But this time, he gets to spend it with Felix.

His turn to ride behind, clinging to the man in front of him. His turn to let go and trust Felix to guide the horse, instruct the battalion, get them to safety. His turn to close his eyes and breathe.

And Felix stays.

When Sylvain presses a kiss and a whispered name to his horse’s forehead as he leaves him in the care of a stable hand, he assumes Felix has already vanished and takes his time, breathing in the familiar scent of sweat and dust and hay.

But when he turns, there Felix is, the blue of his coat muted to grey in the low twilight, sparkling with dew from a gathering fog. Despite everything, here he stands.

Here they both stand, together, and walk side by side to the dormitories. Up the stairs and down the hall to Sylvain’s room, the lamps lit and waiting for them. Inside the small room, and standing inches away as Felix helps Sylvain out of his armor, their shallow breath mingling.

“Kind of you to help me,” Sylvain works out of a throat that feels like it’s being strangled, a broken half-thought drowned out in his own head by one word. _Please._

“I promised, didn’t I?” Felix murmurs, flicking a glance up from under dark lashes. Light brown eyes burn like Bolganone, igniting Sylvain’s blood as his follow up sinks in. “In the infirmary in Enbarr.”

He still has one arm and both legs of armor on when he grabs Felix’s face with both hands and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him until Felix is bent half backwards over Sylvain’s desk.

“There is a bed,” Felix manages, “and you’re still dressed.”

“I don’t give a single _fuck,_ ” Sylvain relishes the profanity, salt on this tongue wetting his mouth with appetite.

Felix is clinging to him too, even as he bites “ _I_ _care_ ,” and throws Sylvain down onto his straw-packed mattress. 

“I want all of you,” he says, one knee on the mattress between Sylvain's thighs as he takes off his overcoat, “not just the parts of you I can sneak between your armor. If we only have this once, I want it _all._ ”

“You can have it,” Sylvain gasps, nearly re-opening the wound in his shoulder as he tries to take off his pauldrons, “all of it, everything, anything, it’s always been yours, goddess, Felix—“

Someone kisses someone, thankfully, and shuts Sylvain up.

They’re not graceful about undressing; Felix does most of the work, shoving Sylvain down every time he tries to sit up and help. He’s not as fast as Sylvain is with the cavalier armor but he has the advantage of two working arms so Sylvain lets him do it.

Naked on the bed, he shivers as he watches those long boots slide down Felix’s legs. “Damn,” he breathes, reverent with prayer, “you really—“

His words dissolve on his tongue.

He’s seen men and women naked before in this context - he’s seen the flushed, aroused bodies of partners whose goal or employment is based on ideal proportions and maximum physical appeal. He knows his own body is lovely to look at, and more than capable of fulfilling the promise of pleasure that the line of muscle along his hip sings of. But it’s something entirely different for it to be someone he loves.

“Come here,” he whispers once Felix is naked and hovering above him, narrow shoulders tensing with sudden nerves. “Let me touch you, Felix. Please.”

Felix’s skin is rough, uneven with tan lines and riddled with scars but the first touch of his naked calf along Sylvain’s knee jolts through him like lightning.

“Shit,” chokes Felix, shuddering above him, but once again he lets himself be pulled in and down, winds his body around Sylvain and presses his face into the crook of his neck. “O-oh.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain rasps, “me too.”

It’s too much. Already, only this and it’s—

Felix shifts, rocking his hips a little and Sylvain can feel his cock catch on Sylvain’s skin, not quite slick enough to slide and all the more perfect for it. Especially when Felix lets out a soft sound of frustration that hits Sylvain like the ballista bolt did.

“No,” Felix growls when Sylvain tries to roll on top of him, shoving his shoulders down. “Stay.”

“I am,” he gasps, cock weeping on his stomach just from the look in Felix’s eyes. “I—I will.”

He’s shuddering above Sylvain already, just from this, flushing all the way down his neck with every uncoordinated little twitch of his hips. He keeps his eyes closed, biting his lip every so often, his chin tilted up in open invitation. So Sylvain licks his palm and sneaks a hand between them to wrap around both their cocks, and when Felix gasps like he’s been plunged in ice water Sylvain latches his mouth on the side of Felix’s neck. Pressing his tongue against the wildly beating pulse, he sucks a wine-dark mark against his skin, relishing the burn in his shoulder that anchors him to the earth as Felix moans over him.

“Nnnnn—“ he whines, desperate, and Sylvain feels dizzy with accomplishment. He’s good at this. He knows this. Propping himself up on his bad arm and feeling his breath catch at the burst of agony, Sylvain bites another hickey into Felix’s shoulder, humming with contentment.

“Like that?” he asks, voice gone gravel and granite as he nuzzles Felix’s neck, working them both in tandem. The knife’s edge of pain and pleasure is one he knows how to ride well.

“Yes,” Felix whispers, then “no” as he grinds down between them. “I want— I want— I want you inside me again, Sylvain.”

Oh.

“Oh.” Sylvain presses his fingers into the base of his cock, trying to stave off his orgasm that is rushing down his spine at those words. “Okay. There—“ he has to swallow and remember how to speak, “there’s a vial under my bed, can you—?”

Felix grunts, kisses him on the cheek, and dismounts him gracefully, long legs swinging over Sylvain’s hips. Felix isn’t tall but a lot of him is leg and Sylvain has never been able to get enough of it. 

It’s a century of winters before Felix comes back, trembling just a little, and he wastes no time coating his fingers in oil and reaching back. The excess drips off onto Sylvain’s hips, making him twitch with every gleaming bead that melts into his skin.

Sylvain strokes Felix’s thighs, thumbs trailing up the inside to where he knows it feels the best. “Eager for me?” he purrs, hiding his own desperation under honey. “Want my cock filling you up just like it did that night?”

Felix grunts, eyes fluttering closed as he works himself open, teeth flashing as he bites his lip. “Not enough.”

“Once wasn’t enough?” Sylvain asks, reaching up to stroke Felix’s cock.

His friend - his lover - his _everything_ blushes all the way down to his collarbones and groans. “No. Y-yes. It’s not— I need more oil,” he struggles.

“Of course.”

Without thinking, Sylvain reaches for the floor with his free hand.

It took him years to conceal his feelings as well as he does; years of walking on sprained ankles and fighting with bruised ribs and fucking with a broken heart. The mask is so thick and goes down so deep that it’s hard to remember to take it off, sometimes, and let the light reach his soul. With Felix he has trouble hiding anything at all.

In a single, thoughtless movement, Sylvain pulls the torn muscle in his shoulder and can’t cut off his gasp in time. Felix freezes, eyes snapping open, and everything Sylvain has worked for over the last ten years vanishes.

He watches Felix’s jaw clench and dulls himself with Gautier ice, prepares himself for the lecture and the anger and consoles himself that maybe, maybe, if they live through the next battle they can try this again.

How long until the last one? Not the end of the war, but the end of their lives? How many more chances is Sylvain going to ruin by his own bloodstained, selfish, foolish hands?

Then Felix sighs and places his other on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Hold still,” he says, wrapping his dominant hand around his wrist and closing his eyes.

Faith magic swells from Felix’s chest, a shimmer of light under his skin that chases the veins down his arms to circle around his palms. Sigils form as Felix’s lips move, silently shaping incantations that brighten before sinking into Sylvain’s skin and washing the pain away.

“Stay down,” Felix repeats, opening his eyes and shifting off the bed again. “I’ve got you. My turn to take care of you.”

It doesn’t hurt anymore. Every other time before, it’s hurt to be with Felix. Between borrowed time and stolen kisses, he’s never let himself enjoy their time together without reservation. Without punishing himself for it. But it doesn’t hurt, and Sylvain is terrified.

“I—“

Felix straddles him again, one hand splayed out across his abdomen for balance as he leans forward, arching his back to find the right angle.

“I love you,” Sylvain says, because it’s the only thing he knows how to do at this moment.

“I know,” Felix grumbles, his shoulders flexing as he shifts his position. His eyes are downcast, out of focus as he touches himself with intent.

“No,” and it comes out a little watery, “ _I love you.”_

That gets his attention.

Felix looks up, fear crossing his expression. A reasonable reaction. Sylvain doesn’t remember the last time he cried, either.

“Yeah,” and Felix presses their foreheads together, rubbing the tips of their noses together. “I _know._ And I love you, too.”

They kiss, gentle and delicate. “Sorry,” Sylvain whispers, hiccuping a little. Wiping away the last tear with the heel of his hand.

“Don’t worry. I told you I wanted all of you, didn’t I?”

Sylvain has to kiss him a little deeper for that, his heart doing a backflip in his chest. “Since when did you get so good with the lines?”

Felix huffs when Sylvain scrapes the edge of his teeth along his jaw. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Oh, Fe, I’ll never get used to you. When did you learn Faith magic?”

“Tell you later,” Felix mutters, which means that it was probably recent and even more probably for Sylvain’s sake. “What did I _say_ about _staying_ _still?”_

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain lies, giving up trying to roll them both over. “I just really, _really_ want to have sex with you now.”

Felix sighs and rolls his eyes and then locks eyes with Sylvain as he rocks his hips back. One hand guides the head of Sylvain’s cock in while the other perched on his chest but, fuck, those eyes. A million emotions pass through them as Sylvain just barely breaches him, but they hold Sylvain’s own.

Felix has never been good at hiding any of his feelings.

This time, when Sylvain grabs Felix’s hips, it’s not with the detached conscious effort of a man preoccupied with a performance. It’s because if he doesn’t get closer to Felix now, he’s going to die.

“Come here,” he says again in a voice not his own - in a voice too honest, too loving to come from his mouth. “Come home.”

And Felix does.

It takes them no time at all to find the right rhythm, one that has Sylvain’s fingers flexing into Felix’s thighs and firm ass and feathering up Felix’s ribs like a drowning man reaching for the edge of a boat, one that has Felix rocking back and forth and splintered syllables spilling out of his mouth with every deep thrust in that sensitive spot. They’ve worked in tandem for so long, they understand each other’s needs without speaking, and when Sylvain needs him to Felix arches his back, raises himself up with his thighs and slams back down with a choked off cry. Over and over and over, until there are bruises on Felix’s hips from Sylvain driving himself into Felix and Felix is sobbing pieces of Sylvain's name.

“I love you,” Sylvain moans, “and we’re gonna— live together. Not die together. _Live_ together.”

He wraps his hand around Felix’s cock and strokes him twice before Felix comes, shaking himself to pieces with a series of gasping cries, and Sylvain follows him. Yanks him down to wraps both arms around him and crush Felix to him, empty himself entirely and fill the void it leaves in him with love. Kisses him, over and over, everywhere he can reach until they’ve caught their breath.

Felix shifts, wincing as Sylvain’s cock slips out of him, and collapses on his side next to Sylvain. “Ugh,” he hisses, despite settling even closer.

Careful not to jostle his newly healed shoulder, Sylvain rolls into his side and strokes gently along Felix’s cheek.

“What.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Sylvain says.

Felix cracks an eye open. “Good. Now let me sleep.”

He could laugh. He could cry. He thinks he does a little bit of both as he sits up, fumbling for the blanket. “Let me clean you up first,” he hums, gently wiping away the mess on both their bodies with the corner of one sheet. It will be a problem for his future self; right now he has a sleepy, soft, fucked out Felix dozing in his bed who loves him, and if he doesn’t get back to touching him soon he’ll lose his mind with want all over again.

“Just a little bit more now,” Felix murmurs once they’re both under the blankets. “Almost there.”

“Yeah. Stay close and stay alive, okay?”

“I will.”

* * *

Somehow, they do.

* * *

The morning after the Professor’s coronation, Sylvain slips inside the church. It’s an hour before dawn and the world is blue and grey and watery gold at the edges like an embroidered wool cape, but she said she would meet him at this time for what he wanted to do.

He couldn’t sleep, so he’s still in his ceremonial best, his armor polished to a mirror-like sheen and the Lance of Ruin strapped to his back. The rubble is being cleared, piece by piece, and to his surprise someone is working on it already.

After a moment, he recognizes the men carrying bricks and boulders as though they weighed nothing at all.

“Dedue,” Sylvain calls, easing the massive doors shut behind him. “Good morning.”

Dedue stops, but his companion does not. Sylvain swallows and approaches them both anyway, holding out a hand for Dedue to take.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, pulling Dedue in for half a hug. It’s reciprocated, and there’s even a faint smile visible in the warm glow of the candles on the walls.

“Thank you for taking care of his Highness.”

“I didn’t,” Sylvain says bitterly. “I probably did the least for him—“

“You didn’t kill him. At Grounder Field. Your actions saved his life.”

“Barely.”

“And you saved his friends. You brought Ingrid and Felix safely out of Faergus, and have kept them alive. Mercedes and Annette, too.”

Sylvain hesitates. “ _Our_ friends, Dedue,” he says after a minute. “They’re your friends, too.”

Dedue nods, then lowers his voice.

“I promised Annette I would fetch us both breakfast from the kitchens. Would you stay here with him for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Sylvain watches Dedue leave for a little too long, until he’s braced himself enough to face the shadow behind him, lifting and carrying rubble with an insect-like singlemindedness.

“Dimitri?” he asks.

The man stops.

“I’m sorry. I know that probably doesn’t mean anything to you now, but I am.” He thinks of Felix, still dozing in bed with bandages up his side from an axe blow that Marianne healed for him, and of the wonderful life that their future promises now. “I… can’t help but feel like I stole the life you were supposed to lead.”

“No.”

Dimitri turns, and his blue eyes are limpid with tears. “No,” he continues, “you deserve a good life, Sylvain. You have suffered enough. Both of you have. It is my regret that I was not able—“

Sylvain crosses the distance between them in seconds and throws himself at Dimitri. The once-prince staggers, but stays upright.

After a moment, he wraps his arms around Sylvain in return.

“I failed you as a leader. I killed you at Grounder Field,” Dimitri whispers, “Why are you happy to see me?”

“Because that wasn’t _you_ who I fought,” Sylvain gasps, squeezing Dimitri as tight as he dares. “And I wanted my friend back more than I needed a king.”

Dimitri shakes in his arms and buries his face in Sylvain’s shoulder. “I don’t deserve such kindness,” he sobs, “after my sins.”

“Yes you do.” The words come easy to him, and he means them all the way down to his bones. “You don’t have to be perfect to be loved.”

By the time Dedue returns, they’re both clearing rubble, their cheeks muddy from dusts and tear tracks but Dimitri is smiling back at Sylvain and shaking his head at a joke. With him is the Professor, radiant in the dawn light and soundless on her feet.

“Sylvain?” she asks. “Are you ready?”

He places the brick in his hands in place, then dusts of his armor. “Yeah. Good to see you, Dimitri. Be sure to come to the dining hall for lunch. I’m sure there are more people who want to see you now that you’re feeling better.”

“I will… try, Sylvain.”

He bows with a flourish and a grin, then hurries to fall into step behind the Professor.

The crypt is dark and cold as they descend, the only light being the flame of the Professor’s torch. He feels like he should call her the Arch-Bishop now or something, but in his head she’s still his teacher. Hasn’t even aged a day, either.

“And you’re sure they’ll accept you without it?” she asks. “I don’t want you to be homeless after all you’ve done.”

“They don’t have to accept anything,” Sylvain says. “If my parents pitch a fit, I’ll just move in with the Duke.”

In the darkness and the silence, the sound of her gentle laugh warms his heart.

There’s a stone coffin with a familiar emblem carved into it. Sylvain runs his fingers over the Crest, feeling it resonate with the power in his blood. He eases the Lance of Ruin off his back and looks at the Professor.

She nods.

Sylvain wraps his fingers around the Crest stone and closes his eyes. He can feel it pulsing under his touch, hot with anger and bloodthirst, making every scar and broken bone in his body throb like the day they were first made. He thinks of war, and Edelgard, and Miklan as he bares his teeth—

And pulls—

And pulls—

With a shout, Sylvain rips the Crest stone from the Lance of Ruin, leaving the Relic to spasm on the stone lid of the coffin. It twitches in his grasp like a dying animal, then lays still. In his other hand, the Crest stone’s light fades. The pain in his body dies away.

He hands the Crest stone to the Professor. “May it rest in peace here,” he says, clearing his throat. “Where it should have been all this time.”

“They will. I promise.”

She looks small and lonely there, by all the graves. His heart aches for her, knowing that for Claude, his life’s work is only beginning.

“Don’t hole yourself away here, okay?” he asks. “You have friends now, not just students and soldiers.”

“I know.” Her smile, curved like the crescent moon, is warm with wisdom. “Let’s leave the dead to their sleep.”

Together, they return to the world above, just in time for the sun to break over the horizon.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t forget to check out some of the AMAZING fanart that’s been done of the series!
> 
> https://twitter.com/waveoftheocean/status/1275610724287442944?s=21
> 
> https://twitter.com/qiliin/status/1264254033830850560?s=21


End file.
